Station to Station
by Energeia
Summary: In the Village Hidden in the Leaves, there is a stone that remembers the beginnings and ends of all its heroes. For all the rest, there is nothing but dust. Third Shinobi War AU.
1. Actors

"I'm leaving," Tsunade announced, absently thumbing the necklace that had betrayed yet another loved one.

It was not the first time Tsunade had threatened to leave, but it was the first time she had ever come before him with nothing left to make her stay in Konoha. Jiraiya was somewhere off in Rain, trying to atone for his sins but most assuredly creating new ones to compensate for those lost. Orochimaru was somewhere deep in the catacombs of the village, failing to find a cure for the common death. Nawaki was dead. Dan was dead. Her cat was dead—euthanized along with thousands of other pets—because of a wartime rumor that there weren't enough rations to feed Konoha's domestic animals. As it turned out, the rumor had only been a rumor and now there was a surplus of moldy dog biscuits in the storehouses that no one could throw away in good faith because there was a real food shortage as a consequence of the fall of Konoha Harbor. And her grandfather, also dead, was staring at him rather imposingly from the mountainside.

Hiruzen folded his hands and wondered when this little girl—who'd once been so competitive that she'd fashioned a makeshift penis to pee faster and further than Jiraiya—had turned into this wan, haggard woman who had patiently waited her turn in a never-ending line to see him. His gaze flickered from the Shodaime's stony visage and back to the dark circles seemingly tattooed under Tsunade's eyes. "Why?" he asked redundantly.

Tsunade raised up her hands and scrutinized her palms. For once, they were impeccably clean. Not a single cut or stain marred her smooth skin. And strangely enough, her customary red manicure had been removed, leaving behind ten neat fingernails trimmed to the quick. She caught his curious look and laid her hands flat on his desk. "Do you know why I always had red fingernails?" she asked.

Someone snorted from the back of the room. Tsunade's head swiveled, scanned the line of fidgeting people, and identified the perpetrator who was doing a marvelous impression of a frightened turtle. Her lips curled into a thin, red smile. "Bloodstains are hard to clean," she remarked offhandedly, still smiling. The room fell silent. There wasn't much fidgeting after that.

"Care to enlighten me?" Hiruzen asked in an attempt to preserve the structural integrity of the Hokage Tower. He lit his pipe as he waited for Tsunade's fists to unclench. "Have a seat," he offered belatedly, gesturing to the armchair in front of him with his pipe.

Tsunade turned back around and eyed the chair for a moment before shaking her head. "No," she said, trying to rake a hand through her lanky hair. Her fingers snagged and came through with a cobweb of hair that she sent fluttering to the ground with a disdainful wave. "I won't be long."

"I see." He couldn't remember the last time they'd exchanged more than a few clipped words in passing. Always cool and professional. Nothing more than platitudes. And now she was planning on leaving.

"Yeah, bloodstains are hard to clean," she repeated. "You know, every operation I performed would get blood under my nails and turn them a nice shade of shit brown. So I always had them painted red. My toenails too, but that's just because I can't stand how shinobi-grade shoes don't cover your toes. What an eyesore."

"Yes, I suppose that's true," Hiruzen agreed with forced levity.

"But I don't paint my nails anymore," Tsunade said, "because…" She bit her lip and looked away, drilling tiny holes into his desk with her nails. "Well, there's really no point. I can't heal anymore. I'm useless. That's the end of it."

"No," Hiruzen said, brows furrowed. "No, Tsunade. You heal regardless of your jutsu. You heal every day simply by being at the hospital. You heal by teaching and leading, and yes, by doing paperwork," he said, smiling ruefully. "You heal by breathing and living and being an inspiration for this new generation."

She looked about as impressed as a doctor encountering a foreign object in one's rectal cavity—not that Hiruzen had intimate knowledge of such things, but Tsunade probably did. "Indeed," she said, matching his formality and affecting an exaggerated lilt reminiscent of her days as the Slug Princess who used to wave regally from inside her slug-shaped palanquin during the summer solstice festival. "I suppose you could consider me an inspiration for alcoholics who are so hemophobic that they need a medical team and a Yamanaka on standby every time their vagina bleeds."

Out of the corner of his eye, Hiruzen saw Danzo raise his eyebrows and heard him sigh very delicately.

"I'm not _needed_ anymore," Tsunade continued. "I've taught my assistant everything he needs to know to lead the hospital. Nothing's going to change if I leave. In fact, I think it'll be better for everyone involved. You can have a Chief Medic who can actually see what he needs to see in order to operate. You'll be able to fire that insufferable Hyuuga you hired to babysit me and 'be my eyes,'" she said, slashing angry quotation marks through the air with her fingers. "It'll be better. I promise."

"Tsunade—" Hiruzen started.

"—So I'm leaving. I can't stay here anymore."

"Tsunade—"

"—You don't even care so why are you arguing with me?" She made the mistake of pausing in her tirade to take a breath and stumbled when her eyes fell on the picture of a younger and happier Team Hiruzen on the desk. There she was in the middle, fifteen years younger with two jaunty fingers raised behind each of her teammates' heads. The same photo had once had a privileged place among the numerous frames on her mantle. And then one day, she'd come home without Dan, without Nawaki, and had hurled all of her pictures at her bathroom mirror.

She looked away hastily, guiltily. A wet film slid over her eyes as she seemed to shrink into herself. "I have to go, Sensei," she said in a low voice, calling him by a title she'd rarely used even in her genin days. "Please."

"Tsunade," Hiruzen prodded gently. He heard her take a shuddering breath and reached forward to grasp her cold, trembling hands. Tsunade squeezed her eyes shut, gnawing on her chapped lips. After a few moments, she gently extricated her hands from his, took a deep breath, and stood up straight.

"Sandaime Hokage-sama, I, Tsunade of the Senju hereby tender my formal resignation as Chief Medic of Konoha Hospital and as a jounin of the Village Hidden in the Leaves. I understand that with my resignation I will no longer fall under the protection of Konoha and her affiliates, that I will no longer serve as a representative of the village, and that I renounce my ties with my clan and fellow shinobi."

Hiruzen watched as she delivered her resignation without stumbling over her words despite the tears pooling in her eyes. He couldn't help the pride that overcame his regret. His heart swelled, smothering any further attempts to compel her to stay.

"You will no longer be Tsunade of Konoha, nor Senju Tsunade, but simply Tsunade. Do you understand and wish to proceed?"

"I do."

They spoke more than words across the great chasm that had gradually come between them over the years. Petty differences, serious disagreements, harsh blows. Tsunade was stubborn and brash. Hiruzen was cautious and all too aware of his image. They'd butted heads and clashed shoulder to shoulder until one day they'd both been too stubborn to reconcile. Dan was fresh in the grave and Tsunade had come to Hiruzen in her grief to blame him for not acting sooner, for being too cautious, for not caring anymore. And she had been right. He had been too slow and had become immune to the concerns of his people.

Time had smoothed away the jagged edges, effacing the harsh inscriptions of past grievances and leaving them with a blank slate. Why and how had they become strangers over the years? How had Tsunade missed the birth of his second son? How had he abandoned her to fight her demons alone? Somehow, it had become clear to Tsunade that she needed to swallow her pride and meet him halfway by coming here and playing by the rules for once in her life. And it was becoming clear to Hiruzen that he needed to do the same. It was time to let her go.

"Then I accept your resignation, Tsunade."

Tsunade nodded, surreptitiously swiping under her eyes. She hesitated before blurting out, "Thank you and sorry. For everything. You were the best mentor anyone could have ever asked for."

"Don't be a stranger, Tsunade," Hiruzen said, trying to keep the wise, thoughtful look on his face from twisting into something sad, regretful, hopeful, proud—he wasn't sure. "Don't drink too much. Don't provoke civilians. And please for the sake of all that is good in the world, don't gamble your inheritance away."

He set his pipe down and struggled to find the right words to say, feeling the eyes of his silent audience and wishing he could shed the guise of leaderly composure. "Most importantly, I ask you—hopefully as a friend—to heal yourself. You're rather good at that, I hear."

Tsunade's lips turned upwards, this time in a genuine smile that revealed her dimples and chased away the years from her face and the shadows under her eyes. "Don't bet on it."

And just like that, she was gone. In and back out of his life the moment she'd dared to test the waters. She had chosen her stage well. Her performance had been inspired. Her script had been perfect, hitting the most poignant chords to garner the most sympathetic chorus of rumors. Like all the best tragedies, it had relied on the subversion of expectations: the princess without a prince, the sister without a brother, the healer without the ability to heal. He didn't doubt her story, but he knew how skilled she was at manipulating public perception. Now, no one could resent her for leaving.

"You always were too soft with that one, Hiruzen," Danzo muttered from the side once Tsunade was out of earshot. "No discipline. No spine." He was half right as usual. And yet, Hiruzen wondered, was Danzo courageous for having raised his objections only once Tsunade was safely out of punching distance?

Hiruzen chose not to dignify Danzo with a response, opting instead to wave forward yet another petitioner from the line of genin, chuunin, and jounin, men and women, and the young and the old comprising the mass of bodies stretching from the street to the top of the Hokage Tower. Most wanted missions for the money they needed to sustain themselves and their families. A small minority sought missions for the sake of relieving the agitating itch that had settled in upon the war's end. These were young ninja who had lost their loved ones during the war and wandered around Konoha restlessly, looking for and finding nothing to anchor them. And finally, there were the multitudes of single mothers and disabled veterans who came here as a last resort to beg some kind of welfare or loan from the state. They had been denied at the banks, turned away from the overflowing community centers, and exhausted the minimal support they could receive from their friends and families. This public forum was their last lifeline and it was being tugged out of their hands by others in the same boat.

"Hokage-sama, I am deeply honored to have been invited to an audience with your magnificent presence today," the man greeted distantly and obsequiously through the haze of Hiruzen's thoughts.

Hiruzen glanced over at the unctuous man who was bowing so deeply that his hair was sweeping the floor. At second glance, Hiruzen noticed the empty sleeve fluttering from the blessed breeze coming through the window.

Many shinobi had returned from the frontlines deaf, blind, mentally ill, missing limbs; an unlucky minority had a combination of these deficits. And there was a far greater number of disabled shinobi returning home alive then there had been during the First War. Towards the tail end of this recent war, Hiruzen had implemented a mandate requiring medic-nin on all outgoing squads. This had raised the survival rate, even if it meant that a ninja survived with a life-long disability.

"What can I do for you?" Hiruzen asked.

The man pulled back his sleeve to reveal a stump decorated with the creeping white scars that were the calling card of Mist's motley crew of inhuman shark children, who lurked below shallow waters and leapt up to catch their prey unawares. "I am here today to request a small loan—

"—I'm sorry," Hiruzen interrupted. "We are not approving any loans at this time. Have a good day."

"But I heard—"

"—Next," Hiruzen called. He watched, unable to feel anything but mild regret, as the man was escorted out of the room. There was nothing he could do.

Ninjas were tools. Like any tool, once a ninja was permanently damaged, it was cast aside indifferently and replaced. So, despite the vast numbers making up this specific demographic, disabled ninja were unduly neglected. For one thing, even if they wanted to work, they couldn't pass the physical exam which was one firm requirement for all ninja on active duty. And without active duty status, they weren't fit to receive health care benefits from the village. They had the option of taking up positions in the civilian sector, but this was undesirable for they had no work experience in the pertinent areas and really had no chance of competing with other more experienced civilians for these positions.

It was a sad reality that most disabled veterans—abandoned with no job prospects, no healthcare to cover the considerable costs of therapy and treatment, and discarded by the very home for which they had fought—left Konoha to settle in small, rural villages spread throughout the Land of Fire to live out the rest of their lives in shame. Some committed suicide, seeing no way out.

But still, it was quite a remarkable thing in the world of shinobi for there to be an institutionalized healthcare system. Konoha had the premier healthcare system of all the shinobi nations. And by that, it was understood that Konoha had the only such healthcare system in all the shinobi nations. This was due entirely to Tsunade, no longer of Konoha, and Dan, for whom the healthcare initiative had done a fat lot of good.

When the next petitioner came forward, Hiruzen was staring at the photo of Team Hiruzen, wondering if he had done right by any of them. At this point, Konoha's best kept secret was the fact that the so-called Sannin were rarely in one place at the same time to be lumped together as a functional trio. It was so typical and paternalistic of Hanzo to act like he was some benevolent explorer, running around the villages like a particularly amorous dog and forcing names on things and people who already had names and weren't in any way affiliated with him. And now that one of the three was officially out of the club, how could anyone maintain that terrible façade, that terrible title? Hiruzen supposed that one could reasonably rebrand the remaining duo as _Ninin_ , but that sounded more like a stutter than a title for two of the most formidable ninja in the known world.

They could have been a joke, albeit a terrible one. A philanderer, a snake charmer, and a hemophobe walked into a bar. The philanderer found a drink and a woman to disgust with his bawdy jokes. The snake charmer headed into the men's restroom and proceeded to do what he did best: charm snakes. The hemophobe was a sad, angry drunk who invariably ended up throwing lecherous men like the philanderer through the walls. And the fourth member of the team was stress-balding in a squeaky office chair as he attempted to solve post-war debt, international tensions, a food crisis, unemployment, reconstruction, healthcare and treatment for disabled veterans with PTSD, and education—all while juggling a newborn baby, a recalcitrant teenager, and a wife with postpartum depression. Indeed, a terrible joke. But that was all the humor Hiruzen could muster.

He turned his attention back to his audience. "How can I help you?" Hiruzen recited pleasantly to yet another faceless person who stammered his way through an utterly uninspiring performance. This one had evidently neglected to rehearse his lines. Tsunade wasn't the only actor. They were all performers in one grand theatre extraordinaire.

* * *

The unpleasant thing about suicide, Hideki thought, was that you couldn't choose the way people saw you after death. This particular specimen hanging in front of him was an exemplary model to prove his point: it was a spectacular shade of puce—a color he could never have imagined or used until he'd taken on this job, but one that had seemingly been created for the exact purpose of describing hanging corpses—and in full view of a growing crowd of appropriately horrified people. He scanned the faces of the people around him. They were all _so_ polite and dignified.

"Oh goodness, that poor thing," murmured one sympathetic woman wearing a purse with a live dog tucked inside.

"I knew him. He was a good man," simpered another, though sans a purse-dog. Her accessory was a hand clutching her heart.

"Fuck." That was the only genuine response, but one that was met with gasps and disdainful mutterings.

Hideki neither knew the man nor cared to know him. If anything, he was tired and annoyed. When he'd brought up how tired and annoyed he was, he was made out to be some kind of heartless psychopath. Maybe it was true. Maybe it wasn't. Hideki did have a piece of paper from the Intelligence Department which had certified his brain as "well-adjusted" if that made any difference. In any case, he would have to wait until the ANBU arrived to clear the crowd and remove the body from the tree. This one was a Hyuuga with a pair of bulging Byakugan staring blindly back at Hideki, and therefore required more security than the standard Uchiha Police sweep. Apparently, the Uchiha couldn't be trusted to keep their hands to themselves when it came to people's eyeballs. It was a fair assumption given the Uchiha clan's sordid history, but the Uchiha had never given a damn about anyone but themselves. _That_ was why Hideki was annoyed: he didn't need a team of ANBU to babysit him to make sure he didn't pluck out the Hyuuga's precious marbles.

As for why he was tired—if Hideki cared to psychoanalyze his emotions, he would likely find probable cause to quit his job. This most certainly wasn't what he had signed up for. Nowhere in his treatise of a job description had there been any mention of cleaning up the messes people left behind when they committed suicide. In all fairness, Hideki hadn't exactly read the entire thing, but this wasn't what he'd envisioned at all. After the tenth, twentieth, thirtieth case, the shock of seeing a hanging corpse had turned into resignation and then a chronic fatigue that seeped into his bones and made it harder and harder for him to get out of bed in the morning. But he was an Uchiha and he couldn't quit the Military Police without consequently being labeled as a flaky wimp and excommunicated henceforth from the most noble clan of glorified conjunctivitis. That was what had happened to his cousin, one Uchiha Yoshino—a cautionary tale. So tired, annoyed, and most importantly _employed_ he would remain.

This wasn't what Hideki had envisioned. He had once entertained the fantasy of swooping in and saving the day. He'd thought that there would be laurels and medals of achievement. Maybe even a girl, and then a family. He hadn't known that he and his peers would be called upon to scavenge the dead like a murder of crows. Disappointment? Disenchantment? Despair, perhaps? All he knew was that reality had failed to live up to his expectations. And maybe this was what the Hyuuga had felt after losing a few limbs and returning home to a thankless village. Hideki could only speculate.

Konoha was the Village Hidden in the Leaves. This meant that there were more than enough trees for each citizen. Like every village, it had its own culture, its own way of doing things.

* * *

AN: Thanks for reading! This is a rewrite of my other story, _Hide and Seek_. If you've read it, you might recognize some passages and themes, but the changes are substantial enough to warrant a new story.

Love and gratitude for my illustrious beta, WesDunne, whose support and editing services have indubitably enhanced your reading experience.


	2. Peacetime

_In the dust of the streets_

 _lie the young and the old;_

 _my young women and my young men_

 _have fallen by the sword;_

 _you have killed them in the day of your anger,_

 _slaughtering without pity._

(Lamentations 2:21)

* * *

"What do we do in peacetime?"

The question caught him off guard. He turned to look at the chuunin who'd addressed him. A tall, skeletal wraith. Her pale face was solemn as she picked dried blood out of her neatly trimmed fingernails with a kunai. She must have been the only one in the entire regiment who still bothered to maintain her nails. He thought better of chiding her for such a glamorous use of their dwindling weapons supply and smiled gently at her all the same.

"I mean," she said pensively, curling a piece of hair around a clean, white finger. He stared at it in consternation. It was an anomaly, an impossibility where everything was a dull grey. Wet grey skies. Wet grey earth. Wet grey bodies. He would have thought she was a newcomer if it weren't for the fact that they'd stopped receiving fresh recruits a year ago. "I think about it a lot," she continued. "What I would do when the war's over, but I don't really know. I was drafted after the war started, so I don't know what it's like as a ninja during peacetime. We just eat and sleep? Is it even worth it? I can't think of anything that's worth all… this." She grimaced and gestured vaguely at the carnage. There was no need for her to be so specific. It was everywhere. Her eyes lingered on a pair of severed hands brought together as if in prayer.

Acid rain didn't make for pretty corpses—not that it particularly mattered. Once the swarms of hunter nin finished plucking out eyes and secrets, the dead would be thrown indiscriminately onto a great pyre where some unfortunate Uchiha would fulfill his noble duty by creating a great bonfire that could survive the rain. It wasn't an enviable task, but it was the first jutsu every Uchiha learned. The first time, the smell had forced him to leave and vomit as respectfully as he could in remembrance of the honorable men and women who had given their lives for their country.

"We do those things, yes," he began, leaving the battlefield and running through the soft, fuzzy memories of his childhood. It had been a while for him too, so it was difficult to conjure up a past during which he'd lived in an actual home rather than a tent, did mundane things like read and shop and fall in love.

"And so much more," he went on. "We eat, yes, but food that doesn't come in packages. We don't eat rations during peacetime. I miss fresh rice a lot, actually—I think the first thing I'll do is go out for some sushi. We sleep in our own beds. We walk in the street without expecting an ambush. We spend time with our families and our loved ones. We train for our own enjoyment, to make ourselves stronger, not because we're afraid of dying. We go on missions that we can actually expect to survive. It's… nice."

She watched him expectantly with round eyes too big for her face, wanting more. "Sure, it's not always wonderful. People still die. It's different for everyone," he said. "But I remember I liked carving wood figurines. There's time to do that during peacetime. It rains too much for me to do that here. And, well, there's a war going on." He shrugged. "That doesn't help."

"It sounds… nice," she repeated wistfully. He watched as she dragged a hand through her long, wet hair, perhaps for the sake of doing something with her trembling hands. Nothing ever dried here. The rain itself was a formidable enemy in the absence of trees to cover them. It was a wonder they weren't walking mold infestations. The food, on the other hand, was usually a lost cause.

There were many soldiers who looked just like her. Bags of bones, young and hungry, withered skin stretched over hollow cheeks. Dead men walking on borrowed time. That was the look worn by those who'd been drafted. They hadn't had the time to build up a tolerance for hunger, cold, damp. Nor had they learned that the war was waged primarily on psychological terms where the victor was determined by one's mental fortitude against the creeping sounds in the night, the gluttonous rats gnawing greedily at one's body, the feeling of lice crawling stubbornly over one's scalp, the acrid odor of burning flesh, the foul taste of unwashed mouths broken only on occasion by moldy ration bars, the sight of bloated, waterlogged corpses.

"Maybe you could teach me sometime," she said, giving up on trying to brush her fingers through her hair and returning her attention to that section she'd been playing with earlier. His eyes were drawn to the way it sprang from her finger, drier and curlier than the rest of her straight, black hair.

"Alright," he agreed for no other reason than her refreshing optimism. He didn't tell her he thought it was impossible for them to go back. But even if it was impossible for them to lead normal lives and return to the world they had torn apart so cruelly with their own hands, there would still be trees in Konoha. There would always be trees in Konoha, and that belief gave him comfort. "Paulownia trees are my favorite," he said with a small smile, for it didn't hurt to indulge an innocent fantasy.

She smiled back at him—a genuine, brilliant smile that felt more precious and rare to him than a laughing Uchiha. "My parents planted a Paulownia tree when I was born. They say they'll cut it down and turn it into a table to send with me when I get married. So I hope you know how to make tables." Her smile dimmed a little, and he found himself wanting to bring it back. Perhaps it was selfish, but bright things were hard to come by in this infernal part of Rain. "I wonder if—when I'll see them again."

He nodded, thoughts returning to his childhood. His parents were dead and he was the last of his clan. "Write to them," he suggested. "I regret not doing that."

"I've been trying all year," she said. "But it's hard. I don't know what to write about. The war? The rain?" She raised a finger to write letters in the air: "'Dear mom and dad, it rains all the time here and the person next to me got his head melted by acid today. He was a nice man who once gave me a leg from the chicken he stole from a nearby farm. In return, I stole the boots from his dead body because mine had holes. It could have been me, but it wasn't. Thank my lucky stars, I guess. I hope you're doing well. Love you,'" she recited sardonically.

Her finger faltered and dropped. "I want to let them know I'm alright and that they don't need to worry," she said in a low voice. "But that's not entirely true, is it? I just got lucky. I didn't even see it coming, to be honest. It could have been me, but it wasn't," she repeated dully. "It just wasn't."

She stared blindly at her white, trembling hands. He felt a rush of guilt for having admired them earlier. It was clear now that she'd achieved the color not merely through the power of good hygiene, but because she was cold and afraid. "I killed someone today," she whispered so quietly that he had to inch closer to hear her over the rain. "With a kunai. I stabbed him—or her, I don't know—three times. That's all it took. I didn't know it would be that easy." She took a shuddering breath and reached frantically in her pouch for a worn pack of cigarettes.

The first response that sprang into his mind was that it would only get easier and easier until it didn't even register that you were doing something as vile as killing. Until the enemy was reduced to a pest, a nuisance, a chore. How many people had he killed? It didn't matter because he hadn't killed enough and there would be more coming tomorrow. Maybe even tonight. Maybe even now. He watched as she struggled to light a cigarette in the pouring rain, cursing under her breath. "Here," he said quietly, stepping closer and lighting the cigarette with a spark of his own chakra.

She laughed a high, quivering breath tinged with insanity as their eyes met over the warm glow of her cigarette. "I could learn a lot of things from you," she remarked with a shaky exhale.

He remained silent as she devoured the cigarette until the bright cherry was flickering on her white fingertips, smudging them a dark grey that matched the drab landscape. "The last letter I wrote them was stupid," he finally said. That was before he'd learned that anything other than despair was arrogance. "I wrote out of duty. Something about how many people I was commanding at the time. But now that they're gone, I think of all the things I should have told them."

"Like what?" This close, he could see himself suspended in her luminous eyes.

He looked away, afraid to open up to a stranger but craving human contact so much that it almost hurt physically. "That I resented them," he admitted at last. She nodded thoughtfully, and more confessions came forth unbidden.

"That I would have done anything for my mother's cooking," he continued, "but that I was too afraid of her to tell her it needed more salt. That I left to cry in another room the first time my father told me he loved me, but that I hated him for never letting me have a real childhood. That I'm grateful for their sacrifices. That I wish I knew more about them. That they were right about the girl I wanted to marry when I was a teenager. That they were wrong about my hair…"

He swallowed hard. "That I love them and that I'm sorry for resenting them when they did everything they could to keep me alive."

It wasn't closure, per se, but it felt good to confess. He watched, fascinated as various emotions flitted across her open face and found himself relieved by the tender look that settled in her eyes. It felt even better to admit imperfection and be accepted.

"What were they right about? What were they wrong about?" she whispered.

"They were right that she didn't love me back. But they were wrong about my hair being impractical," he replied.

She tilted her head, considering the long ponytail hanging over his shoulder. "I like it."

He felt the flush on her face reflected in his own and sheepishly rubbed his neck, which she seemed to find endearing judging from the way she smiled at him.

They parted without exchanging names, as was the custom in those times. It was much easier to operate by titles that could be refilled than by unique names attached to real bodies that never returned no matter how hard one wished or prayed or wanted.

When they found each other again, they were both orphans. By that point, the war had followed them back into the Land of Fire and the tiny villages sprinkled around the coast. Her village had been swallowed up by the sea, for there were true monsters clothed in human skin who could summon tsunamis on innocent children and civilians on nothing more than a cruel whim.

She had never gotten a chance to send that letter and he had never learned how to soothe tears away with words. So he had brought her a humble leaf carved out of Paulownia wood and earned the name _White Fang_ with the lightning he brought down upon the Mist's bloody armada.

It had been exactly 17 days since Jiraiya had returned home and he had yet to see either one of his teammates. Tsunade was nowhere to be found—he'd checked the bathhouses and the hospital as soon as he'd arrived—but there were plenty of rumors about her abrupt resignation and departure. When he had asked his old teacher about it, Hiruzen had just lit his pipe and sighed. His Sensei often looked disappointed—especially with him—but that disappointment was usually accompanied by a list of flaws Jiraiya was supposed to fix. Jiraiya didn't know what to do when there was disappointment but nothing to fix. There wasn't enough pestering in the world to get Hiruzen to open up about Tsunade and Jiraiya was left feeling that he'd missed out on something he could never catch up to. An inside joke? Or perhaps it was the opposite.

* * *

It was on the 31st day of his second attempt at living in Konoha that Hiruzen finally called him back into his office.

The greeting fell dumbly from his lips as he took in the smiling blond waiting for him. His heart leapt rudely to his throat. A joke? Something to fill the brilliant blonde hole Tsunade had vacated?

His new student was bright and beautiful and talented and so, so young, and it broke Jiraiya's heart. _What are you doing with your life,_ he wanted to ask. _Don't throw it away,_ he wanted to say. This was Konoha, the most developed of the hidden villages where children shouldn't be plucked out of childhood and thrown into combat. This wasn't the frog-shaped hut he'd built out of necessity to shelter three wayward orphans from exposure to the cruel rain and even crueller bandits.

He stared questioningly at Hiruzen, who only nodded as if everything was unremarkably okay.

His name was Minato; he was brilliant like the sun and he was the biggest idiot Jiraiya had ever met.

If Jiraiya's young student followed him to the brothels and bathhouses, he simply let it happen because women usually made better company than knives. His student was a quick learner: he caught on to the fact that Jiraiya looked at him with a comment only when he did something truly outstanding. But on his off time, he sank underground below Minato's notice to look for his other teammate.

Orochimaru was _supposed_ to be somewhere in Konoha. But all his usual haunts were empty, and Jiraiya was annoyed that his teammate had left him no other choice than to hunt him down like the slippery snake he was. It wasn't unusual behavior, exactly, but the Orochimaru he knew had come up for air and food every few days at the very least.

He was even more annoyed when his efforts were rewarded by a raised eyebrow and a sharp, "What are you doing here?"

Jiraiya huffed and crossed his arms, taking in the strange assortment of objects and smells Orochimaru had collected in this dinky little lab in the deepest catacombs Konoha had to offer. "The question is," he said, "what are _you?"_ He strolled around, undeterred by his teammate's slanted eyes.

"I wouldn't smell that if I were you," Orochimaru said mildly, sweeping his hair back and returning to the files he'd been perusing when Jiraiya had walked in.

Jiraiya paused before carefully setting down the vial of purple liquid in his hand. The small grove of trees in the corner of the lab was more interesting, he decided. And quite strange, he thought, circling a tree that almost seemed to have a human face carved on it. He reached out to trace the mouth opened up in a silent scream. His hand jumped as the tree seemed to respond with a strum of chakra.

"I wouldn't touch that if I were you," Orochimaru repeated, his voice just as silky as his glossy, black hair.

"What's gonna happen? Is the tree going to bite me?"

"Perhaps."

Jiraiya squinted at his teammate's back, wondering if Orochimaru was fucking with him as usual or if he was giving a genuine warning as usual. He reached back out anyway. That foreign chakra vibrated as his hand approached.

A hand closed tightly around his wrist. "I didn't think you'd need babysitting, Jiraiya," Orochimaru said, his lips curled up in a tight smile. "After all, that's what you've been doing these past few years, isn't it?"

Jiraiya returned the smile. "Philanthropy," he corrected. "That's what I was doing."

"You must be mistaken," Orochimaru replied, eyes glittering. " _Philandering_ is the correct term, my dear teammate."

"Same thing," Jiraiya snorted. "At least when I'm doing it."

Orochimaru took a step back, lips curled down distastefully.

"There he is." Jiraiya grinned. "That's the face I was looking for." He watched his teammate's elegant nostrils flare delicately and punched his shoulder with his free hand. As usual, it felt like Jiraiya was hitting a very skinny rock. But he couldn't help his relief. He knew this person. He knew how to interact with this person. Here was Orochimaru, the same prickly snake he'd always been. Maybe he was more secretive and anti-social than before, but the war had made recluses of them all. Even Jiraiya had stopped drinking in public bars where it was all too easy for someone to take advantage of another—something he'd enjoyed before. But he was too conscious of every rustle, every movement, every exit, every concealed item to enjoy it now.

Jiraiya jerked his chin at the trees. "What're those?"

Orochimaru exhaled a long suffering sigh as he released Jiraiya and began to walk towards the exit. "As usual, you prove yourself incapable of basic induction." He glanced over his shoulder. "Those," he explained very patiently, "are trees. We have many trees in Konoha."

"Cute," Jiraiya returned dryly. "You'd make a great Academy teacher if it weren't for the fact that little children cry when they see your ugly face."

"I could say the same about you, dear friend," Orochimaru said. He didn't have his usual silver tongue, Jiraiya noticed. Nor did he seem to be very interested in his current projects since he was leaning against the doorway, waiting for Jiraiya to join him. The files and specimens were scattered in disarray and the only clean thing in the lab was Orochimaru himself.

"These don't look like any trees I've seen," Jiraiya muttered half to himself, finally placing an open palm against the tree in front of him. "What is this chakra?" Under the rough bark, there was something beating steadily. If he were touching something besides a tree, Jiraiya might have sworn it was a heartbeat. He pushed back with a little chakra of his own. Nothing happened.

Orochimaru watched him lazily through lidded eyes. "That's precisely the problem. They're Hashirama trees, but something went wrong as they were growing."

"Were?" Jiraiya asked. "They're only saplings."

Orochimaru shook his head. "Were," he repeated. If his voice sounded tired and defeated, Jiraiya didn't comment on it. He was tired too.

"What happened to Tsunade?"

"I don't know. She left without saying goodbye."

"You should have been there for her."

"Yes."

"I should have been there for her."

"Yes."

They walked in silence to the highest point in the village where they could see life blooming in the bustle of the tiny ant-like figures down below. Jiraiya wondered if this is what Orochimaru saw on a daily basis: a scientist looking down, detached from his objects of study. It was strangely comforting. He thought he could understand now why Orochimaru had retreated into the most remote pocket of society. He thought he could understand now why Tsunade had left the village altogether. The village was there, alive and thriving because they had done their duty, but they were no longer a part of it. They were a whole generation of dying men and women, quietly succumbing to irrelevance and extinction.

Their lives could not be understood just as they could not understand the lives of those who had never been in the killing fields.

"Welcome home, Jiraiya," Orochimaru said quietly, almost overpowered by the wind.

* * *

AN: Thanks to my lovely beta, WesDunne!


	3. 20:17

_When we are born, we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools._

 _King Lear,_ Shakespeare

* * *

 _0 hours and 0 minutes_

"Oh!"

The sound came from the kitchen. Sakumo leapt from where he'd been sitting, scattering the planks of wood that were supposed to resemble a crib, and moved faster than he'd ever moved in his life.

"What? What is it?" he asked, slightly out of breath, eyes roving wildly over the room. No enemies present. No wet splotches on her dress. No screaming. No signs of distress.

Miyako turned to him with a slight frown on her face. She held out her hands, which were cradling a small sparrow twitching feebly. "It hit the window, poor thing."

He twitched too as his heart beat back into place. "You're okay," he said dumbly.

"Of course I am," she scoffed. Her voice turned soft and sympathetic again as she turned back to the bird. "But he's not. Do you think he's gonna make it?" Miyako cooed distractedly, still trying to channel healing chakra into a dying bird.

"No," he sighed. "Look at it. It's already dead."

"Oh," Miyako said softly. She petted its fragile head one more time before grabbing a wooden spoon from the dish rack and waddling outside. "Poor thing," she repeated.

"Let me," he said, reaching for the wooden spoon.

"No." And before he could retort, she added in a sharp voice, "I'm pregnant, not disabled."

So Sakumo bit his tongue and watched as she carefully balanced her enormous belly on tiny feet to kneel and dig a small grave for the sparrow right next to all the other tiny graves she'd dug for the other birds that had met their deaths on the window. "Rest in peace, Panko," she said, patting a mound of dirt over the grave.

"Panko?"

"Panko," she repeated firmly.

"We should put a screen over it," Sakumo commented. "The window, I mean."

"But the sunlight is so nice," Miyako said sadly. "And my scallions need it."

It was when she pulled herself back up to her feet that she blanched and grabbed his arm to steady herself.

"Was that…?"

Miyako shook her head. "It can't be. It's three weeks too early."

* * *

 _4 hours and 37 minutes_

"Do you believe me now?"

"No."

"But you stopped fighting."

"So? Does that mean I believe you? Couldn't it mean that I think this argument is dumb and that I'm being the adult in this relationship?"

"It could mean that," Sakumo agreed. "But I'm the one carrying you like a child."

Miyako snorted inelegantly. "That's because I'm carrying _your_ child."

"Who is coming right now. As we speak. Which is why we're going to the hospital."

"Which is why they're going to send us home," Miyako argued back. "Which is why this whole argument is pointless because I know my body better than you and I'd know if I were in labor."

Sakumo shrugged, bumping her up with her in his arms. "Is that really fair? You always forget when your period is coming and I have to remind you not to wear your good underwear and to put a towel on our sheets. Why would you ever buy _white_ sheets as a menstruating woman?"

They attracted many scandalized glances, especially when Sakumo yelped as Miyako yanked on his ponytail in retaliation.

"Hey, those sheets were completely necessary. The thread count for your last set was atrocious."

"That's beside the point," Sakumo replied. "You've never had any other complaint about our bed."

"Oh, you boys," Miyako said, shaking her head with a knowing smile. "You all think you know women so well. You think knowing the location of the clitoris makes you an expert on the female body? Congratulations! You pass basic human anatomy."

Sakumo continued smiling down at her until she narrowed her eyes at him and slapped his arm. "What?" she said suspiciously.

"I don't care about other women, though," he remarked. "It only matters that I know _you_."

Miyako stared back at him owlishly, face stiffening into stone. But he knew he had her by the way her lips wobbled at the corners. After a prolonged moment of silence, she broke down and snorted a gust of hot air right into his face. "You, husband mine," she began, "are the corniest man in Konoha. Wipe that shiteating grin off your face, sir. You don't deserve it."

Sakumo threw his head back and laughed. "You didn't correct me, though," he pointed out.

"That's because your comment is so idiotic it can't be dignified with a response."

When he pouted, she rolled her eyes and muttered something unflattering about the size of his brain. But he found her hand and squeezed nonetheless. He felt good. He felt happy. Even Miyako couldn't argue with that.

They were within a few meters of the hospital doors now, and he felt Miyako shifting uneasily in his arms with each step forward. He knew she wore her sarcasm like armor when she was anxious. So he tucked his head into the crook of her neck and said, "We'll be alright. You, me, and the baby. And just think," he whispered, "you can have caffeine again." It was awkward and a bit painful for him to talk with his neck bent in half, but she seemed to appreciate it judging from the way she squeezed his hand tighter as her other hand found its way up to his hair.

"That does sound nice," she agreed. "And I'll be able to eat my own cooking again. Doesn't that sound like a dream?"

"I thought we were doing pretty well with mine," he replied.

She snorted, smacking him lightly on the head. "Don't think so highly of yourself. I'd rather die than eat more of your cooking."

"Don't say that," he said shortly.

Miyako peered into his eyes, brushing the hair out of his face. "Hey," she began softly, using the contrite tone she used when she accidentally put too much chocolate in their cheesecake. He hated chocolate, but he suffered it for her sake. "I—"

The rest of her sentence was cut off by a pained groan. The pleasant, tingling sensation in his hair turned painful as she yanked on his ponytail as if it were a birthing rope. He had to angle his head back awkwardly to avoid having his hair pulled out. And then he felt something warm soaking his sleeves and trickling down through his pants.

Was she peeing on him? His nose soon proved that no, Miyako hadn't peed on him; her water had just broken. So he walked as quickly as he could and nodded his head at the bemused nurse who held the door open for them to pass. And this was how they presented themselves to the receptionist: Hatake Sakumo, the White Fang, Jounin Commander, celebrated war hero, and generally very important person, being pulled around by a leash by his laboring wife and looking for all the world like he had just wet himself.

* * *

 _10 hours and 14 minutes_

Their doctor stuttered. He had an impressive array of pimples dotting his weak jawline and not much else. In actuality, he was not even a real doctor, but a student in his last year of residency who was currently in the lead for delivering the most live babies in a contest run by the hospital board. He told them as much with a proud grin that fluttered and withered away under Sakumo's accusing stare. By the time his inane ramblings trailed off into the realm of useless ideas, Sakumo had already vacated the room in search of an actual doctor; Miyako was looking out the window and tapping her foot impatiently.

She perked up and immediately deflated at the sight of Sakumo's rigid neck as he entered the room.

"Really?" she couldn't help asking. "There's really no one else?"

Sakumo shook his head. "They're understaffed."

"There's no need to worry," the young doctor protested. "I've delivered 23 healthy babies."

"No one cares," Sakumo and Miyako said in tandem.

"I apologize for our staffing situation," someone interrupted. They turned around to see a matronly nurse standing before them with her hands clasped politely in front of her. Already, Sakumo approved. Unlike the bumbling fool who still had his hands stuffed in his pockets, she knew the proper way to address a ninja: hands out in the open. "But rest assured that I will be working with you every step of the way and you may feel free to ask me any questions," she continued in a soothing, practiced tone that suggested many years of experience. "The first labor is usually protracted, so it may be a while before we can take you to the delivery room."

"We're in your hands," Miyako said with a warm smile.

* * *

 _25 hours and 36 minutes_

Miyako was exhausted. Her antsy energy had waxed with each contraction only to wane in the prolonged absence of a baby boy. She was dilated enough to keep them in the hospital; she wasn't dilated enough to be where it mattered in the delivery room. It was finally after the twentieth hour that the doctor had the nurse give Miyako something to expedite the process. But they were still stuck in something like purgatory that consumed them with an anxiety worse than hellfire.

A half-empty bowl of miso soup teetered on top of a pile of old, crusty salmon rolls that Sakumo was trying to cajole Miyako into eating. She swatted him away with a listless hand, looking sleepy and bored. A faint sheen of sweat covered her forehead, extending back into her hair, which had accumulated a day's worth of perspiration and oil. He started—it had been a _day_ and the baby had gotten no further than a few measly centimeters.

The same nurse from before came in routinely to check up on Miyako. It wasn't anything he hadn't seen before, per se, but he still felt like looking away when the nurse spread Miyako's knees and shoved a shiny, metal probe between her legs. She hummed to herself as she worked, a curiously dissonant tune against the dull buzz of electricity coming from the lights and generators.

Sakumo cleared his throat.

"Yes?" the nurse asked, still peering between Miyako's legs.

"When can we expect to deliver?" he asked, slightly bemused by the fact that he was asking a question that would be just as appropriate in a warehouse.

The nurse turned around in surprise and blinked, as if the concept of time was foreign to her. This afforded Sakumo a view up Miyako's hospital gown that he didn't particularly want to see at this time and place. From his vantage point, she looked less like a human being and more like an engorged spider with her swollen belly extending outwards in hair and spindly limbs. He decided that the window revealed more interesting things, which earned him a weak scowl from Miyako.

They frequently argued about the aesthetics of their respective sex organs. She said hers looked like a rose in full bloom; he wondered how she could even see that far down to know (she'd responded with a sly smile that he was afraid to pry apart). And he was still of the conviction that the female sex organ looked unpleasantly like a sea anemone; she'd replied that it didn't matter since he ate both anyway. In any case, she firmly believed that if hers looked like a sea anemone, his equipment resembled the oldest, crustiest sea cucumber in the ocean. To this, he'd replied that it didn't matter for she ate both anyway.

"Oh," the nurse murmured, checking the watch that was hanging from wheelchair. "Well… the first labor is usually protracted," she repeated uncertainly.

The burst of contempt he felt for that banal statement was surprising even to him.

* * *

 _30 hours and 3 minutes_

"We need to deliver by Caesarean section."

Sakumo blinked. "Pardon?"

"Um," the doctor began confidently, "your, um, baby isn't positioned properly to exit the vagina. _Vagina_ ," he repeated loudly and slowly, his lips puckering and opening up like an amorous fish. "That is the woman's—"

"—Sex organ, yes," Sakumo snapped. "I know. And as it is the so-called the _birth channel_ , I'm asking if you know whether or not it's truly necessary for you to cut her open."

The doctor shrugged.

Sakumo inhaled and counted to ten as Miyako had taught him. "Do you?" he asked, adopting the doctor's patronizingly slow tempo. "Do you know what you're doing at all?"

"Oh, of course!" the doctor hastened to say. "I'll have you know that I've delivered 23—"

"—Yes, _I know,"_ Sakumo interrupted. "I know you've delivered 23 healthy babies. The issue at hand, however, is not _my_ knowledge but yours. So tell me, doctor. Do you know what you're doing?"

"I—" he withered under Sakumo's probing look. "Yes," he squeaked. "Yes I do."

"And?"

"Oh!" the doctor exclaimed, finally catching on. "We need to deliver by c-section because your child has failed to reach optimal fetal positioning. Attempting vaginal birth from this angle will surely cause excruciating pain for the mother and will likely result in excessive bleeding." He sounded like a textbook, but that was exactly what Sakumo needed to hear.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Miyako raise her head from her nest of stolen hospital pillows. She was trembling and almost as white as her sheets. "I can do it," she protested weakly.

"No." Sakumo shook his head. "You can't do it," he said not unkindly.

"I want—I need to do this properly," she begged. "Please. I'm his mother."

Sakumo glanced back at the doctor who shook his head no. They were finally on the same wavelength, but without her. "No," said Sakumo. "It's too late for that."

* * *

 _31 hours and 0 minutes_

They were cutting her open while Sakumo was stationed in an observation room above the operation table along with what seemed to be the entire hospital. Everyone watched with bated breath as the doctor made a neat incision across her lower belly. The thin line immediately thickened with dark blood that crawled slowly down her swollen belly.

Someone gasped loudly, startling Sakumo and a few other spectators.

"Sorry," someone said, giggling. "This is so cool."

"No, it's not," he snapped. "That's my wife and my child. They're not zoo animals."

The room fell quiet at that, but there was a price to pay for silence. A few women clucked in sympathy. Or perhaps they were admonishing him for his part in this operation. A hundred pairs of eyes bored through the back of his head as the doctor peeled apart Miyako's stomach as if it were an orange. In his hands went; out they came, dripping with blood and holding something that looked like a freshly skinned rabbit.

It did not cry. It did not move. It did not make a noise.

Someone put a comforting hand on his shoulder and Sakumo jerked away, just shy of sticking a knife in the offender's head. No one dared touch him after that.

They watched as the doctor massaged the baby's body and cleared its nostrils of fluid.

A few sympathetic titters came from behind Sakumo. He couldn't care less; his attention was wholly consumed by the gloved hands trying to pull Miyako's deflated stomach back together.

Distantly, he registered the high pitch of a baby's cry. His eyes flitted away from Miyako to watch the doctor hand the screaming baby over to the nurse so he could turn to face the audience with a grin and pump his fist in the air. "24!" the doctor exclaimed triumphantly.

The observation room exploded with applause. And maybe it was because of the noise that Sakumo didn't immediately notice the commotion below him. It was a curious sight. There was a gaping, red hole in Miyako's body that was leaking, leaking, leaking past the panicking hands stitching her up, past the operation table, spilling onto the floor. It was everywhere.

He didn't notice the people he ploughed through until he came to an impenetrable cordon of bodies blocking the door. "Move," he ordered. But no one heard him over the excited chatter that had taken control of the room. "Move," he demanded loudly, trying to shoulder his way past the crowd. The people nearest shushed him. " _Move,"_ he shouted. But still no one moved.

Sakumo looked helplessly back over his shoulder, but he had given up his front row view to the spectacle. All he could see was the tray of bloody tools the doctor had used during the operation.

So he turned back around, drawing a kunai and raising it high. "Move," he commanded once more.

A woman to his left screamed and pointed at the kunai. It had the opposite effect of what he'd intended: instead of moving out of the way, the crowd surged forward like a frightened pack of lemmings. Someone cried out. It could have been him, but there was a cage of human bodies crushing his lungs against his ribs. He got his wish in the end as the massive body slowly and forcibly pushed its way out of a tiny entrance. Two nurses were left bleeding on the floor of the observation room. The rest scattered.

Red sirens followed him with a deafening screech as he made his escape, but Sakumo was already pushing his way into the operation room by the time the security personnel started their hunt.

He wrenched the door open without any finesse. The doctor looked up in surprise, his blue gown stained with the same blood dripping down the operation table.

Someone confronted him with a slimy, moving mass of blood and skin that only added to the cacophony. "Isn't he magnificent," someone crowed.

Sakumo flinched. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Miyako struggling to raise her head at his approach. The sirens continued to ring, but the only sound that mattered was the dull _thump_ that resounded through his ears as her head fell back onto the table.

* * *

 _44 hours and 31 minutes_

"God is watching over you."

Sakumo continued staring down into his hands. He'd been listening as the monk slowly and loudly made his way through the waiting room, attempting to save its wretched heathens. Somehow, the monk was still chipper after having affirmed only damnation for the damned. Or perhaps that was what he sought in the first place. Religious fanatics were often delighted by unbelievers, he found. They were made more distinguished, more righteous, more pious by virtue of the damned.

He was going to continue ignoring the monk in favor of counting the faded lines on the linoleum floor. But the monk insisted on Sakumo's attention. A rosary twirled around as the monk remarked, "Everything happens in accordance with God's will."

Sakumo looked first at the pair of sandals intruding his field of vision. His eyes traveled up the bony ankles, black robe, black rosary beads, long white hair, the pale face grinning like that of a gleeful child keeping a dirty secret. It was the God of Death. Or, at the very least, it was one of those insufferable people who celebrated holidays all year round.

They were in the right wing of the hospital, which was conveniently situated right above the morgue. When a patient died, the hospital staff slid the body down a chute and made the bed for another victim. No wonder he was so goddamn cheerful.

"God wills death?" Sakumo asked redundantly.

"Oh yes," the monk replied with relish. "Death binds us all. It is the only thing that makes us truly equal. Death is the end of pride and greed. Death is the end of the ego, the end of selfishness. Death is the end of desire and its cohort: suffering. Only in death can we truly be liberated and achieve peace."

"Then why are we born at all? Why must we suffer?"

"How else could we understand the value of death, of liberation? We live and suffer in preparation for death. Death is nothing to fear."

"Why should we value death when it kills everything of value?"

The monk smiled. " _Death_ is the only thing of value. It is eternal. All things of this world are transient as you very well know. Your wife is dy—"

Sakumo was on his feet, towering over the monk. "I do not believe and I cannot believe," he said slowly, hating the way his entire body vibrated witfh anger, the way his hands shook like they were anticipating a fragile neck. "You are wrong. God, the spirits—or whatever energy force you speak of—would not give me a child in exchange for a mother."

"God works in mysterious ways," the monk said mysteriously.

For a moment, Sakumo wondered whether or not he should test the monk's affection for death. There was nothing worse to him than inexplicable phenomena being attributed to divinity. He could understand humans and their motivations and situations and shortcomings, but he could not accept the confusion caused when human beings elevated their misfortunes to some higher power. To him, evil occurred simply as a consequence of poor choices.

He shook his head. "Then your God is evil."

"He is," the monk agreed.

Sakumo started. But before he could respond, the doctor came rushing towards them, making a shooing gesture with his hands. "You, get out of here!" the doctor called.

The monk remained quiet for a moment, lips moving in silent prayer, before he gave Sakumo one final glance and strolled nonchalantly down the hallway as if he had every right to be there. The doctor finally reached Sakumo and attempted to catch his breath surreptitiously. They watched the monk walk away, twirling his rosary jauntily around one finger and proclaiming death to all heathens in a loud, cheery voice.

"Who is that?" Sakumo asked.

"A solicitor," the doctor said, still inhaling a little too desperately to look as though he were in control. "Don't mind him."

"I do mind," Sakumo replied sharply. "Perhaps your receptionist should be less receptive."

The doctor threw him a weary look, eyebrows reaching up towards his hairline. But he simply gave a strained smile and muttered, "Apologies." He'd changed out of his stained blue gown and into a stark white doctor's coat that somehow made him look even more like a vagrant. He must have been tired too, Sakumo realized. Baggy eyes and greasy foreheads seemed to be ubiquitous in the hospital; not for the first time this evening, he wondered if Hiruzen had been wise to let Tsunade leave so freely.

He decided the issue wasn't worth pursuing—he was procrastinating anyway. "How is she?" he asked quietly.

The first sign that something had gone wrong was that the doctor didn't speak for a few moments even after catching his breath. Instead, he looked down at his terribly uninteresting shoes. His mouth twisted in a pained grimace several times before he responded, studying the ceiling as he avoided Sakumo's eyes. "She's in recovery."

Sakumo swallowed. There was something cold creeping up his body. "And what," he said slowly, "is she recovering from?"

"Ah," the doctor began. "There were complications after the surgery—"

"Don't do that," Sakumo interrupted, gesturing vaguely with frustrated hands. "Just give it to me straight. Don't beat around the bush."

In the end, the precise details of said complications were not important. The doctor had lied: Miyako was bleeding slowly to death and there was nothing that could be done about it. Even with the knowledge of all this medical jargon—embolisms, hemorrhaging, amniotic fluid—the doctor lacked the skills to _do_ something. So Miyako was going to die. She was going to die and there was nothing Sakumo or anyone else could do. Just this morning, she'd been cooking pancakes and he'd been failing at building a crib. How had it come to this?

How was someone supposed to act in this situation? He tried frowning, but his face felt like hardened rubber in the cool, dry air. He tried shaking his head, but that only made him dizzier. He tried gesturing with his hands because there was no room for reason in this buzzing confusion. But he didn't know what to say.

So he laughed. A quiet breath bubbled out of his throat and expanded into a deep laughter that had him shaking and gasping for air. It was the only thing that made sense him. Laughter because this was absurd. Laughter because this was obscene. Laughter because death made everything irrelevant and worthless. They had killed for this. They had survived a war for this. It was so silly and naive—how they'd believed they could escape just because they had paid the price in blood: a hundred lives sacrificed to the god of death in exchange for two. It had all been for nothing.

He put his head in his hands, suddenly feeling lightheaded. "Your streak," he remarked, gasping for breath.

The doctor coughed and lifted up a finger. "It stands," he corrected quietly, pushing his falling glasses back up his greasy nose with that stupid finger standing erect like an unwelcome boner.

There was a law in Konoha that prohibited, or made extremely punishable, any violent actions targeting medics, doctors, and hospital staff. One could expect to have a hand removed for every hand one raised against the collective entity known as Konoha Hospital. For the first time, Sakumo had a visceral understanding of the reason behind such a law.

He laughed again. The doctor seemed to take that as a sign of levity or forgiveness and chuckled along nervously, swiping a hand across his shiny forehead. Just like that, the laughter broke and crumbled in Sakumo's throat; he stared up at the angry red pimples speckling the doctor's jaw and remembered that the person in front of him was nothing more than a boy playing dress up.

"Where is Tsunade?" Sakumo wondered aloud.

The doctor shrugged.

"Is there no one else?"

The doctor shrugged again. "I'm the only one on duty—"

He never got to finish his sentence for Sakumo quite suddenly felt the nausea that had been brewing since that _thing_ had been pulled from the gaping hole in Miyako's belly. In the rush of emotions and sensations that followed, he latched onto the very juvenile, vindictive satisfaction that arose at the sight of the doctor flinching away belatedly from the vomit leaking into his ugly shoes.

No one bothered him after that.

* * *

 _45 hours and 13 minutes_

He could not look at the grey body lying so pitifully in the stark white hospital bed. As he came in, he was assaulted by the stench of warm blood overlaid with lemon-scented cleaner. All the details the doctor had told him fled from his mind as he checked the room for escape routes—there were none other than the door behind him—and a high beeping noise penetrated through the cotton someone had shoved in his ears.

"Sakumo," someone called his name from a distance.

"Sakumo."

"Sakumo."

He flinched—a hand, cold and clammy, circled around his arm. Miyako was holding on to him, or was it the other way around? It didn't matter in the end.

"Breathe," he felt Miyako say. "Breathe with me."

The first breath was messy, caught in a tight chest that refused to expand. The room smelled like an old slaughterhouse so saturated with blood that he could taste a metallic tang sending a pool of saliva into his mouth. The second breath was wet and broken, bubbling down his throat. The third broke into a cough. But still he focused on the finger drawing rhythmic circles on his palm until his breaths were strong and even.

He read rather than heard the word she was saying with her colorless lips: "Hey."

Sakumo cleared his throat of the bile still clinging unpleasantly to his mouth. "Hey," he greeted back.

"How is he?"

It took him a moment to process her question. But that was all it took for Miyako to come to the right conclusion. She frowned; the slackening of her lips merely emphasized her striking resemblance to a corpse.

"You love me," Miyako demanded in a voice scraped apart by screams.

"You know I do," he said softly.

"How can I know?"

He looked at her, feeling betrayed. "If love were the only thing that mattered," he said, "you would live forever."

"Then you love him too, don't you? Tell me you love him," she said with that same grating voice.

This was a curious question to him for he had never imagined the possibility of raising this child without her. His mind conjured up the image of him trapped alone in the house with a faceless infant, and his heart rebelled, saying _no, I can't do this by myself._ He found himself horrified by the prospect, by the idea of this motherless child, that strange creature that had been pulled from her bloody stomach.

"Tell me you love him," she repeated vehemently.

"I would take it back if I knew," he whispered. "I can't do this without you."

"Tell me you love him."

"I don't," he finally confessed.

Her face crumbled. "Then lie," she implored. "Lie until it's true."

"Okay," he agreed, for it didn't hurt to indulge an innocent fantasy.

She choked on her own saliva. "You will," she commanded.

"I will," Sakumo promised.

"Yes, you will because—"

Her voice cracked again. She forced down another cough, closing her eyes. A tear sprang free from her lashes and trickled down her cheek, followed by another and then another. He caught them with his finger, carefully brushing his thumbs under her eyes as if her papery skin would tear at the mere spectre of force. She squeezed her eyes shut tighter at the gesture, making him draw back for fear of hurting her. But a cold hand came up to keep him in place.

"You'll be the only one he has."

"No—"

"Oh, Sakumo," she chided tenderly, "let's not pretend."

He shook his head mutely, not trusting his ability to speak—or hers. Her words, normally so crisp and precise from her days in the Intelligence department, were losing coherence as she slipped further and further away.

"I don't know what to say. Why is that?"

"You don't have to say anything," he said. "Just stay with me."

"You're sweet. And so brave. When I'm gone, you should find another girl. It's okay, you know. You should find someone else to love."

Love was a curious thing that had never been defined to his satisfaction—not by the poets, storytellers, and all the fools who had ever been in love. But if this was the sort of evil wrought by love, he would never love again. It would be easier, he thought, if he could simply amputate the emotion, the impulse, the habit, the organ. If he could purge himself of all the diseased cells contaminating his soul, he would be happy. But even as he was thinking this, he realized that the amputation was already in motion as each dying breath sawed through the ligaments holding their lives together.

"No." This wasn't what he wanted at all.

A sad smile flickered on her lips. "I know you won't, and part of me is glad because I'm selfish. But I want you to be happy."

"Don't talk. Just rest."

"You'll show him pictures of me, won't you? You'll tell him how much I love him. You'll take him to visit me. and tell him that I'm so, so, _so_ sorry and how much I wish… I wished—I wished I could live to see him take his first steps and grow up to be taller than me and still be a little shit because you _know_ he's gonna take after you."

Sakumo reached out as if he could pluck away her words before they could escape her lips. "Don't," he warned again to deaf ears.

"Did you know Mito and Hashirama found each other in the next life?"

"What?"

"Their trees grew together and still bloom together now. They still love each other, even in death. You should take Kakashi to see them someday."

"I'm—"

"That'll be us. I believe we'll be together in the next life. You and me."

How could anyone have conviction in the afterlife, he wondered. Was he the only fool who believed in life itself?

They fell silent. Her eyes were hazy with tears, but he could still make out the desperate movement of her pupils as she tried to look at him. It was unfair. He could see everything so clearly—her wrist fluttering with a weak pulse, purple veins through translucent skin. But while she was trying her best to get a clear picture, he kept his eyes on the black hair spilling over her pillow. It was the most innocuous part of her he could find.

"I want to live."

"You will."

"I don't want to die."

"You won't."

"I don't wanna die I don't want to I don't wanna I don't wanna."

"Please stop."

But she continued to babble until she slipped away from consciousness.

He stood tethered to her side like a dog, feeling nothing but a faint buzzing sensation in his ears and a heavy weight on his eyelids.

Days must have passed before there was any living activity. Something tugged on his sleeve. He felt that she wanted to do something with his hand and yielded it with trepidation. He was right: she took it and pressed it to her cold, chapped lips. It was the feeling of her weak breaths ghosting unevenly over his skin that drove him from the room with trembling shoulders, robbed of speech. He couldn't stand idly by, hearing, feeling, and seeing those breaths growing ever weaker until they stopped altogether. A muffled noise followed him, but he closed the door and leaned his forehead against it, ready to suffer the guilt that came hand in hand with the relief from escaping that stifling room.

 _Why God_ , he wondered, for she was going to die for no other reason than giving birth. And that did not seem to be a poor choice at all. _Is that what you require? A life for a life?_

 _If you exist, you will heal her_ , he prayed. _If you heal her, I will believe_. _If I believe, I will do whatever you ask._

 _Please._

 _Please._

 _Please._

But there was only silence. Not even the soliciting monk said a word as he made his illicit rounds, avoiding Sakumo like he was cursed.

* * *

 _52 hours and 23 minutes_

The nurse shook him out of his stupor. "You should go see her now," the nurse said hollowly.

He tilted his neck upwards in a daze, feeling the weight of his head suspended on the cold door. His eyes were so heavy that it was a wonder they hadn't dropped to the bottom of his skull. "Is she…?" he rasped.

The nurse shook her head wordlessly. She opened her mouth as if to say something, but simply shook her head again and offered him a hand. The sorrowful, pained look on her face told him what her tongue lacked the courage to form. It wasn't enough. She had done her best and had achieved nothing. They'd trusted her and she had failed them. He couldn't fault her for her shortcomings—not when she'd tried so hard—but he despised her nonetheless.

So he nodded, if only because he was so repulsed by the penitent woman standing before him, too overcome by shame to apologize properly. His body unfolded and rose without the help of her hand. The door opened and closed behind him. The body inside could have been another anonymous corpse in the morgue for all the feeling it inspired. It wasn't her; it was already cold to his probing touch and looked dead. Very rarely did it happen that a corpse would be so lucky to appear asleep. But dutifully he stayed by its side until the heart monitor went flat and the nurses came in to wheel the body away and push it down the chute. It didn't take long.

They pushed him out of the hospital into broad daylight with a squalling infant in his arms and a handful of pamphlets that were supposed to teach him all the essentials of childcare. His feet trudged forward mindlessly, miraculously. By the time they brought him home, the pamphlets were gone for they had fallen out of his limp hands.

As usual, he shucked off his shoes for someone else to pick up and place on the shoe stand. As usual, he hung his keys on the hooks near the door. And as usual, a loud bump came from the kitchen, signifying the death of yet another bird.

He almost turned around to say, "I told you so."

For all intents and purposes, it was a normal Monday afternoon. The sun was shining. The birds were chirping outside, adding to the buzzing cacophony of midday traffic. The smell of freshly baked bread wafted in through an open window.

But this time, there was no one to pick up his shoes. There was no one to hang a set of keys next to his. And there was no one to mourn the death of a humble sparrow. The house was empty.

The child in his arms continued to cry for he had no mother to feed him.

It happened as he was standing in the foyer of his own home: he began to see things he had never really taken note of before—things he'd taken for granted. Among them was a calendar drawn on the chalkboard under the keys in her handwriting. She had drawn a smiling sun wearing sunglasses over today's date to signify the weather. Tomorrow's weather was supposed to be overcast according to the frowning sun obscured by a cloud with an evil grin. And on a date three weeks down, there were two smiling stick figures holding a tiny stick figure between them. A lopsided heart surrounded the crude little stick family.

She had always struggled with symmetry. More than once she'd emerged from her vanity with one eyebrow plucked thinner than the other, leaving one half of her face looking perpetually surprised and the other serious. She'd given _two-faced_ a definition unique to her.

Something wet trickled down his face and he held up an open hand in surprise, wondering if it was raining despite the forecast. It was a silly thought for someone standing inside a warm, dry house on a sunny day.

It was September 15 the day Kakashi was born.

It was September 15 the day his wife died.

* * *

Much thanks to WesDunne and Infamous Storm for their feedback and support.


End file.
